Murder in Any Degree Part 4

"When did you give up painting?" said Herkimer, shortly, with a sure feeling that the hour of confidences had come.

"Seven years ago."

"Why in G.o.d's name did you do it?" said Herkimer, flinging away his cigar angrily. "You weren't just any one--Tom, d.i.c.k, or Harry. You had something to say, man. Listen. I know what I'm talking about,--I've seen the whole procession in the last ten years,--you were one in a thousand.

You were a creator. You had ideas; you were meant to be a leader, to head a movement. You had more downright savage power, undeveloped, but tugging at the chain, than any man I've known. Why did you do it?"

"I had almost forgotten," said Rantoul, slowly. "Are you sure?"

"Am I sure?" said Herkimer, furiously. "I say what I mean; you know it."

"Yes, that's true," said Rantoul. He stretched out his hand and drank his coffee, but without knowing what he did. "Well, that's all of the past--what might have been."

"But why?"

"Britt, old fellow," said Rantoul at last, speaking as though to himself, "did you ever have a moment when you suddenly got out of yourself, looked at yourself and at your life as a spectator?--saw the strange strings that had pulled you this way and that, and realized what might have been had you turned one corner at a certain day of your life instead of another?"

"No, I've gone where I wanted to go," said Herkimer, obstinately.

"You think so. Well, to-night I can see myself for the first time," said Rantoul. Then he added meditatively, "I have done not one single thing I wanted to."

"But why--why?"

"You have brought it all back to me," said Rantoul, ignoring this question. "It hurts. I suppose to-morrow I shall resent it, but to-night I feel too deeply. There is nothing free about us in this world, Britt.

I profoundly believe that. Everything we do from morning to night is dictated by the direction of those about us. An enemy, some one in the open, we can combat and resist; but it is those that are nearest to us who disarm us because they love us, that change us most, that thwart our desires, and make over our lives. Nothing in this world is so inexorable, so terribly, terribly irresistible as a woman without strength, without logic, without vision, who only loves."

"He is going to say things he will regret," thought Herkimer, and yet he did not object. Instead, he glanced down the dimly flushed path to the house where Mrs. Rantoul was sitting, her embroidery on her lap, her head raised as though listening. Suddenly he said:

"Look here, Clyde, do you want to tell me this?"

"Yes, I do; it's life. Why not? We are at the age when we've got to face things."

"Still--"

"Let me go on," said Rantoul, stopping him. He reached out absent-mindedly, and drank the second cup. "Let me say now, Britt, for fear you'll misunderstand, there has never been the slightest quarrel between my wife and me. She loves me absolutely; nothing else in this world exists for her. It has always been so; she cannot bear even to have me out of her sight. I am very happy. Only there is in such a love something of the tiger--a fierce animal jealousy of every one and everything which could even for a moment take my thoughts away. At this moment she is probably suffering untold pangs because she thinks I am regretting the days in which she was not in my life."

"And because she could not understand your art, she hated it," said Herkimer, with a growing anger.

"No, it wasn't that. It was something more subtle, more instinctive, more impossible to combat," said Rantoul, shaking his head. "Do you know what is the great essential to the artist--to whoever creates? The sense of privacy, the power to isolate his own genius from everything in the world, to be absolutely concentrated. To create we must be alone, have strange, unuttered thoughts, just as in the realms of the soul every human being must have moments of complete isolation--thoughts, reveries, moods, that cannot be shared with even those we love best. You don't understand that."

"Yes, I do."

"At the bottom we human beings come and depart absolutely alone.

Friends.h.i.+p, love, all that we instinctively seek to rid ourselves of, this awful solitude of the soul, avail nothing. Well, what others shrink from, the artist must seek."

"But you could not make her understand that?"

"I was dealing with a child," said Rantoul. "I loved that child, and I could not bear even to see a frown of unhappiness cloud her face. Then she adored me. What can be answered to that?"

"That's true."

"At first it was not so difficult. We pa.s.sed around the world--Greece, India, j.a.pan. She came and sat by my side when I took my easel; every stroke of my brush seemed like a miracle. A hundred times she would cry out her delight. Naturally that amused me. From time to time I would suspend the sittings and reward my patient little audience--"

"And the sketches?"

"They were not what I wanted," said Rantoul with a little laugh; "but they were not bad. When I returned here and opened my studio, it began to be difficult. She could not understand that I wanted to work eighteen hours a day. She begged for my afternoons. I gave in. She embraced me frantically and said; 'Oh, how good you are! Now I won't be jealous any more, and every morning I will come with you and inspire you.'"

"Every morning," said Herkimer, softly.

"Yes," said Rantoul, with a little hesitation, "every morning. She fluttered about the studio like a pink-and-white b.u.t.terfly, sending me a kiss from her dainty fingers whenever I looked her way. She watched over my shoulder every stroke, and when I did something that pleased her, I felt her lips on my neck, behind my ear, and heard her say, 'That is your reward.'"

"Every day?" said Herkimer.

"Every day."

"And when you had a model?"

"Oh, then it was worse. She treated the models as though they were convicts, watching them out of the corners of her eyes. Her demonstration of affection redoubled, her caresses never stopped, as though she wished to impress upon them her proprietors.h.i.+p. Those days she was really jealous."

"G.o.d--how could you stand it?" said Herkimer, violently.

"To be frank, the more she outraged me as an artist, the more she pleased me as a man. To be loved so absolutely, especially if you are sensitive to such things, has an intoxication of its own, yes, she fascinated me more and more."

"Extraordinary."

"One day I tried to make her understand that I had need to be alone. She listened to me solemnly, with only a little quiver of her lips, and let me go. When I returned, I found her eyes swollen with weeping and her heart bursting."

"And you took her in your arms and promised never to send her away again."

"Naturally. Then I began to go out into society to please her. Next something very interesting came up, and I neglected my studio for a morning. The same thing happened again and again. I had a period of wild revolt, of bitter anger, in which I resolved to be firm, to insist on my privacy, to make the fight."

"And you never did?"

"When her arms were about me, when I saw her eyes, full of adoration and pa.s.sion, raised to my own, I forgot all my irritation in my happiness as a man. I said to myself, 'Life is short; it is better to be loved than to wait for glory.' One afternoon, under the pretext of examining the grove, I stole away to the studio, and pulled out some of the old things that I had done in Paris--and sat and gazed at them. My throat began to fill, and I felt the tears coming to my eyes, when I looked around and saw her standing wide-eyed at the door.

"'What are you doing?' she said.

"'Looking at some of the old things.'

"'You regret those days?'

"'Of course not.'

"'Then why do you steal away from me, make a pretext to come here? Isn't my love great enough for you? Do you want to put me out of your life altogether? You used to tell me that I inspired you. If you want, we'll give up the afternoons. I'll come here, I'll be your model, I'll sit for you by the hour--only don't shut the door on me!'

"She began to cry. I took her in my arms, said everything that she wished me to say, heedlessly, brutally, not caring what I said.

"That night I ran off, resolved to end it all--to save what I longed for. I remained five hours trudging in the night--pulled back and forth.

I remembered my children. I came back,--told a lie. The next day I shut the door of the studio not on her, but on myself.